Tag Archives: Threads of Iron

Two new books from Shearsman bring some lost or uncollected work of Andrew Duncan back into the public eye and both are startlingly immediate to the eye and mind.

Threads of Iron is Andrew’s lost book: not because it was never published, but because it never appeared as intended. Instead, the original was split into two and was published in two parts by Reality Street Editions (in 1991) and by Shearsman Books (in 2000). Another part of the manuscript was cut and became Sound Surface; this latter manuscript is part of In Five Eyes, published simultaneously with this volume.

Three of the poems from Threads of Iron were first published in Grosseteste Review15 (1984-85), Tim Longville’s last issue of the finely produced magazine that he had started along with John Riley and Gordon Jackson in 1968. ‘The Poet and the Schizophrenic’, ‘Visitors to Art Galleries Considered as a Branch of the Fine Arts’ and ‘Turkish Music’ appeared alongside work by William Bronk, Tom Lowenstein, Andrew Crozier, Nick Totton, Philippe Jacottet, Rosemarie Waldrop, Stephen Rodefer, Ian Patterson, John Wilkinson, Peter Riley, Peter Robinson, Michael Haslam, Rod Mengham, Roy Fisher, Anthony Barnett, John James, David Chaloner and more…and more…

and they were followed by ‘A letter to Andrew Duncan’ by J. H. Prynne, a short extract from which appears on the back cover of this Shearsman publication:

‘Seeing this sequence as a large, articulated work, put into its sections and with the culminations of a sustained amplitude, I esteem its achievement very highly.’

As a matter of further interest and connectedness it is worth noting that the first issue of SNOW is due out on Friday:

SNOW 1 is published on Friday and will be sent out to contributors and those